Posted on 03/23/2008 12:25:21 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney, starting a visit on Saturday to try to push forward Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, said Washington would never pressure Israel to take steps that threaten its security.
Palestinians accuse Israel of undermining the U.S.-sponsored peace talks by expanding Jewish settlements, refusing to remove West Bank roadblocks and mounting offensives against militants in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip who fire cross-border rockets into the Jewish state.
"America's commitment to Israel's security is enduring and unshakable, as is Israel's right to protect itself always against terrorism, rocket attacks and other attacks from forces dedicated to Israel's destruction," Cheney told a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
"The United States will never pressure Israel to take steps that threaten its security."
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum called Cheney's comments "inciteful and completely biased in favours of the Israeli occupation."
He said it "confirms the United States is a partner to Israel in its war against our people and against the Gaza Strip."
Olmert said his talks with Cheney would include concerns about Iran and Syria, and that "we are anxious to carry on the peace negotiations with the Palestinians."
Cheney said the U.S. role was not to "dictate the outcome" of the peace talks, launched at a conference in Annapolis, Maryland, in November with the goal of reaching a statehood agreement before U.S. President George W. Bush leaves office in January.
PEACE PLAN
"Reaching the necessary agreement will require tough decisions and painful concessions by both sides but America is committed to moving the process forward," Cheney said.
"We want to see a resolution to the conflict, an end to the terrorism that has caused so much grief to Israelis, and a new beginning for the Palestinian people."
Cheney will visit the occupied West Bank over the weekend and meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as well as Prime Minister Salam Fayyad before leaving for Turkey, his last stop on a nine-day visit to the Middle East region.
Israel tightened its economic and military cordon around the Gaza Strip after Hamas Islamists routed Abbas's more secular Fatah forces and seized control of the coastal territory in June.
Bush made his first presidential visit to Israel and the West Bank in January and said he was optimistic a peace deal could be reached before he left office. He is expected to make another trip soon.
The peace talks have shown little sign of progress and have been slowed by increasingly heated disputes over Jewish settlement building near Jerusalem and an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip that killed more than 120 Palestinians.
The United States says neither Israel nor the Palestinians have done enough to meet their commitments under a long-stalled "road map" peace plan.
The plan calls on Israel to halt all settlement activity and to uproot outposts built in the West Bank without government authorization. It asks the Palestinians to rein in militants.
Palestinians want the United States to put pressure on Israel to halt Jewish settlement expansion as well as to lift security restrictions for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
With U.S. backing, Egyptian-brokered ceasefire talks are underway that could bring a halt to rocket fire from Gaza as well as Israeli military operations in the territory, though Israeli officials have played down the chances any lull will last.
When one can’t refute facts, then charge “typical response”.
“Bigoted” is a legitimate English word, and sometimes the shoe fits. The “fact” is that all the Jews in the territories are referred to as “settlers”, “occupiers” or “dead”. Thus, by its nature, your language is bigoted.
There are, on the other hand, over a million Muslims in Israel; they are called “Israelis”. Why the difference? The Palestinian movement is definitionally a bigoted movement, since it is hatefully biased against Jews. The fact that it has any international legitimacy is to the shame of the world.
Cheney should inform the President.
BTTT
Sorry, but that’s a ridiculous argument.
Israel calls the colonies built in the occupied territories “Jewish settlements,” settlements which have been built for Jewish immigrants. The people who live in them are, therefore, referred to as “settlers.”
Only someone who sees “anti-Semite” in any and every criticism of Israel would ever think of insinuating that even the word “settler” is a bigoted word.
“By not answering a single question directly — or even indrirectl;y — you’re not doing such a bad job of sounding just like them.”
I answered your question. Maybe you’d like to read it again?
I have noticed, however, that you haven’t answered my question; so I’ll repeat it:
Question: How many settlements has Israel built in the territories it conquered in 1967, and why do you suppose they’re considered “illegal” by the world?
“The Nation of Israel is God’s Chosen People. You mess with them, you mess with God. You try to divide their land that God gave to them, you’re messing with God’s property.”
I suggest that you stay away from the Hagee-type books from now on and read your Bible. While you’re at it, you may want to include the New Testament in your reading (which tells us that Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of all the promises made in the OT).
Galatians 3:16: The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ.
Galatians 3:29: If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
BTW, “casting pearls before swine” means believers should not continue to witness to people who have rejected the Gospel with contempt. “Swine” is not a reference to Christians who worship only God and do not also worship the modern, secular state of Israel.
[The United States says neither Israel nor the Palestinians have done enough to meet their commitments under a long-stalled “road map” peace plan.]
Good.This peace plan when instituted will bring war in the middle east as the terrorist islamics will begin murder the jewish people as they get closer and closer to their cities with the help of the fools who beleive their can be peace with the religion and governments of the nations that intend to destroy Israel. Nevertheless, when the people of Israel finally make a peace aggreement with the anti christ man and politician and deceiver andleader of the ten nations, then this peace agreement will lead break out into the final wars of the 7 year tribulation. God said it, that settles it, I beleive it.
I believe that the arab islamic terrorist murderers of the 22 middle eastern nations who have continuously stated over and over and over again their intent to destroy Israel, these jew murderers of children and haters of God’s Christ, they are the ones who continue to get a pass for all the evil they do. And just because rinos don’t understand, of which our President is as well as the marxist left wing democrats, does not mean that the so called seperate state will not be a disaster for all the world.
This is but one of his GREAT failures, he does what most rinos do, protect to a degree but does not understand that their can be no peace between Israel and the surrounding Islamic nations but by strength and will of God. And the will of God is that the nation Israel will always be a nation before Him and will be ruled over by Christ Jesus at His 2nd advent when He alone will destroy the man anti Christ and the false prophets and all the nations that will come to destroy the nation of Israel, you know, the battle of Armageddon, when the nations of the world and the religions therein and the secular humanist peoples will fight against God and Christ Jesus will tread out the wine press of the fierceness and wrath of God on all those who come to destroy His chosen nation of Israel. Or maybe you are of another religion or a secular humanist evolutionist person.
God said it, that settles it, I believe it.
Any practicing Jew residing in the territories and outside the “settlements” is dead. Any attempting to would be killed. Any synagogue built there over the centuries has been destroyed. This implies an utter intolerance of anyone of a particular creed, i.e. bigotry. Look up “bigotry” in the dictionary if you need help.
Referring to anyone in the territories as a “settler” simply because they’re Jewish and as a “Palestinian” simply because they’re Muslim implies that, by definition, one creed belongs there, and the other doesn’t, justifying, implicitly, the bigoted behavior that I just mentioned. That is bigoted language; it doesn’t matter who uses it or what their motivations were.
I don’t recall using the term “anti-semite” or addressing “every criticism of Israel”. Were you referring to someone else, or just being presumptuous?
The History and Meaning of "Palestine" and "Palestinians"
"There is no such thing as a Palestinian Arab nation . . . Palestine is a name the Romans gave to Eretz Yisrael with the express purpose of infuriating the Jews . . . . Why should we use the spiteful name meant to humiliate us?
The British chose to call the land they mandated Palestine, and the Arabs picked it up as their nation's supposed ancient name, though they couldn't even pronounce it correctly and turned it into Falastin a fictional entity." — Golda Meir quoted by Sarah Honig, Jerusalem Post, 25 November 1995
Palestine has never existed . . . as an autonomous entity. There is no language known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestinian culture. There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians (another recent invention), Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc.
Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel represents one-tenth of one percent of the landmass. But that's too much for the Arabs. They want it all. And that is ultimately what the fighting in Israel is about today . . . No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be enough. — from "Myths of the Middle East", Joseph Farah, Arab-American editor and journalist, WorldNetDaily, 11 October 2000
From the end of the Jewish state in antiquity to the beginning of British rule, the area now designated by the name Palestine was not a country and had no frontiers, only administrative boundaries . . . . — Professor Bernard Lewis, Commentary Magazine, January 1975
Talk and writing about Israel and the Middle East feature the nouns "Palestine" and Palestinian", and the phrases "Palestinian territory" and even "Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory". All too often, these terms are used with regard to their historical or geographical meaning, so that the usage creates illusions rather than clarifies reality. What Does "Palestine" Mean?
It has never been the name of a nation or state. It is a geographical term, used to designate the region at those times in history when there is no nation or state there.
The word itself derives from "Peleshet", a name that appears frequently in the Bible and has come into English as "Philistine". The name began to be used in the Thirteenth Century BCE, for a wave of migrant "Sea Peoples" who came from the area of the Aegean Sea and the Greek Islands and settled on the southern coast of the land of Canaan. There they established five independent city-states (including Gaza) on a narrow strip of land known as Philistia. The Greeks and Romans called it "Palastina".
The Philistines were not Arabs, they were not Semites. They had no connection, ethnic, linguistic or historical with Arabia or Arabs. The name "Falastin" that Arabs today use for "Palestine" is not an Arabic name. It is the Arab pronunciation of the Greco-Roman "Palastina" derived from the Peleshet.
How Did the Land of Israel Become "Palestine"?
In the First Century CE, the Romans crushed the independent kingdom of Judea. After the failed rebellion of Bar Kokhba in the Second Century CE, the Roman Emperor Hadrian determined to wipe out the identity of Israel-Judah-Judea. Therefore, he took the name Palastina and imposed it on all the Land of Israel. At the same time, he changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina.
The Romans killed many Jews and sold many more in slavery. Some of those who survived still alive and free left the devastated country, but there was never a complete abandonment of the Land. There was never a time when there were not Jews and Jewish communities, though the size and conditions of those communities fluctuated greatly.
The History of Palestine
Thousands of years before the Romans invented "Palastina" the land had been known as "Canaan". The Canaanites had many tiny city-states, each one at times independent and at times a vassal of an Egyptian or Hittite king. The Canaanites never united into a state.
After the Exodus from Egypt — probably in the Thirteenth Century BCE but perhaps earlier — the Children of Israel settled in the land of Canaan. There they formed first a tribal confederation, and then the Biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the post-Biblical kingdom of Judea.
From the beginning of history to this day, Israel-Judah-Judea has the only united, independent, sovereign nation-state that ever existed in "Palestine" west of the Jordan River. (In Biblical times, Ammon, Moab and Edom as well as Israel had land east of the Jordan, but they disappeared in antiquity and no other nation took their place until the British invented Trans-Jordan in the 1920s.)
After the Roman conquest of Judea, "Palastina" became a province of the pagan Roman Empire and then of the Christian Byzantine Empire, and very briefly of the Zoroastrian Persian Empire. In 638 CE, an Arab-Muslim Caliph took Palastina away from the Byzantine Empire and made it part of an Arab-Muslim Empire. The Arabs, who had no name of their own for this region, adopted the Greco-Roman name Palastina, that they pronounced "Falastin".
In that period, much of the mixed population of Palastina converted to Islam and adopted the Arabic language. They were subjects of a distant Caliph who ruled them from his capital, that was first in Damascus and later in Baghdad. They did not become a nation or an independent state, or develop a distinct society or culture.
In 1099, Christian Crusaders from Europe conquered Palestina-Falastin. After 1099, it was never again under Arab rule. The Christian Crusader kingdom was politically independent, but never developed a national identity. It remained a military outpost of Christian Europe, and lasted less than 100 years. Thereafter, Palestine was joined to Syria as a subject province first of the Mameluks, ethnically mixed slave-warriors whose center was in Egypt, and then of the Ottoman Turks, whose capital was in Istanbul.
During the First World War, the British took Palestine from the Ottoman Turks. At the end of the war, the Ottoman Empire collapsed and among its subject provinces "Palestine" was assigned to the British, to govern temporarily as a mandate from the League of Nations.
The Jewish National Home
Travellers to Palestine from the Western world left records of what they saw there. The theme throughout their reports is dismal: The land was empty, neglected, abandoned, desolate, fallen into ruins
Nothing there [Jerusalem] to be seen but a little of the old walls which is yet remaining and all the rest is grass, moss and weeds. — English pilgrim in 1590
The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population — British consul in 1857
There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent [valley of Jezreel] — not for 30 miles in either direction. . . . One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings.
For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee . . . Nazareth is forlorn . . . Jericho lies a moldering ruin . . . Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation . . . untenanted by any living creature . . . . A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds . . a silent, mournful expanse . . . a desolation . . . . We never saw a human being on the whole route . . . . Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country . . . . Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes . . . desolate and unlovely . . . . — Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 1867
The restoration of the "desolate and unlovely" land began in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century with the first Jewish pioneers. Their labors created newer and better conditions and opportunities, which in turn attracted migrants from many parts of the Middle East, both Arabs and others.
The Balfour Declaration of 1917, confirmed by the League of Nations Mandate, commited the British Government to the principle that "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish National Home, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object. . . . " It was specified both that this area be open to "close Jewish settlement" and that the rights of all inhabitants already in the country be preserved and protected.
Mandate Palestine originally included all of what is now Jordan, as well as all of what is now Israel, and the territories between them. However, when Great Britain's protégé Emir Abdullah was forced to leave the ancestral Hashemite domain in Arabia, the British created a realm for him that included all of Manfate Palestine east of the Jordan River. There was no traditional or historic Arab name for this land, so it was called after the river: first Trans-Jordan and later Jordan.
By this political act, that violated the conditions of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, the British cut more than 75 percent out of the Jewish National Home. No Jew has ever been permitted to reside in Trans-Jordan/Jordan.
Less than 25 percent then remained of Mandate Palestine, and even in this remnant, the British violated the Balfour and Mandate requirements for a "Jewish National Home" and for "close Jewish settlement". They progressively restricted where Jews could buy land, where they could live, build, farm or work.
After the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel was finally able to settle some small part of those lands from which the Jews had been debarred by the British. Successive British governments regularly condemn their settlement as "illegal". In truth, it was the British who had acted illegally in banning Jews from these parts of the Jewish National Home. Who Is A Palestinian?
During the period of the Mandate, it was the Jewish population that was known as "Palestinians" including those who served in the British Army in World War II.
British policy was to curtail their numbers and progressively limit Jewish immigration. By 1939, the White Paper virtually put an end to admission of Jews to Palestine. This policy was imposed the most stringently at the very time this Home was most desperately needed — after the rise of Nazi power in Europe. Jews who might have developed the empty lands of Palestine and left progeny there, instead died in the gas chambers of Europe or in the seas they were trying to cross to the Promised Land.
At the same time that the British slammed the gates on Jews, they permitted or ignored massive illegal immigration into Western Palestine from Arab countries Jordan, Syria, Egypt, North Africa. In 1939, Winston Churchill noted that "So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied . . . ." Exact population statistics may be problematic, but it seems that by 1947 the number of Arabs west of the Jordan River was approximately triple of what it had been in 1900.
The current myth is that these Arabs were long established in Palestine, until the Jews came and "displaced" them. The fact is, that recent Arab immigration into Palestine "displaced" the Jews. That the massive increase in Arab population was very recent is attested by the ruling of the United Nations: That any Arab who had lived in Palestine for two years and then left in 1948 qualifies as a "Palestinian refugees".
Casual use of population statistics for Jews and Arabs in Palestine rarely consider how the proportions came to be. One factor was the British policy of keeping out Jews while bringing in Arabs. Another factor was the violence used to kill or drive out Jews even where they had been long established.
For one example: The Jewish connection with Hebron goes back to Abraham, and there has been an Israelite/Jewish community there since Joshua long before it was King David's first capital. In 1929, Arab rioters with the passive consent of the British — killed or drove out virtually the entire Jewish community.
For another example: In 1948, Trans-Jordan seized much of Judea and Samaria (which they called The West Bank) and East Jerusalem and the Old City. They killed or drove out every Jew.
It is now often proposed as a principle of international law and morality that all places that the British and the Arabs rendered Judenrein must forever remain so. In contrast, Israel eventually allotted 17 percent of Mandate Palestine has a large and growing population of Arab citizens.
From Palestine To Israel What was to become of "Palestine" after the Mandate? This question was taken up by various British and international commissions and other bodies, culminating with the United Nations in 1947. During the various deliberations, Arab officials, spokesmen and writers expressed their views on "Palestine".
"There is no such country as Palestine. 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented. . . . Our country was for centuries part of Syria. 'Palestine' is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it." — Local Arab leader to British Peel Commission, 1937
"There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not" — Professor Philip Hitti, Arab historian to Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, 1946
"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria." — Ahmed Shukairy, United Nations Security Council, 1956
By 1948, the Arabs had still not yet discovered their ancient nation of Falastin. When they were offered half of Palestine west of the Jordan River for a state, the offer was violently rejected. Six Arab states launched a war of annihilation against the nascent State of Israel. Their purpose was not to establish an independent Falastin. Their aim was to partition western Palestine amongst themselves.
They did not succeed in killing Israel, but Trans-Jordan succeeded in taking Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and East Jerusalem, killing or driving out all the Jews who had lived in those places, and banning Jews of all nations from Jewish holy places. Egypt succeeded in taking the Gaza Strip. These two Arab states held these lands until 1967. Then they launched another war of annihilation against Israel, and in consequence lost the lands they had taken by war in 1948.
During those 19 years, 1948-1967, Jordan and Egypt never offered to surrendar those lands to make up an independent state of Falastin. The "Palestinians" never sought it. Nobody in the world ever suggested it, much less demanded it.
Finally, in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Movement was founded. Ahmed Shukairy, who less than 10 years earlier had denied the existence of Palestine, was its first chairman. Its charter proclaimed its sole purpose to be the destruction of Israel. To that end it helped to precipitate the Arab attack on Israel in 1967.
The outcome of that attack then inspired an alteration in public rhetoric. As propaganda, it sounds better to speak of the liberation of Falastin than of the destruction of Israel. Much of the world, governments and media and public opinion, accept virtually without question of serious analysis the new-sprung myth of an Arab nation of Falastin, whose territory is unlawfully occupied by the Jews.
Since the end of World War I, the Arabs of the Middle East and North Africa have been given independent states in 99.5 percent of the land they claimed. Lord Balfour once expressed his hope that when the Arabs had been given so much, they would "not begrudge" the Jews the "little notch" promised to them.
[Note: Some of the material cited above is drawn from the book From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters.]
-----------------------------------------------------------
Have a nice day.
I was referring to zionists who equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, which is pure hogwash. Read the comments by some who post to FR and you should see what I mean.
I was speaking of the residents of the settlements, not Jews who don’t live in the settlements, who are obviously not settlers. There’s a difference, don’t you know. I don’t know why you’ve confused the two, but obviously you have.
Joseph Farah? Gold Meir? Oh, yes, very objective.
Thanks anyway for the revisionist history of Palestine.
And by the way those were only 2 of the individuals named. Were all of those people, including to ones who worte of spolke before you were even a gleam in you Daddy's eyes, making that stuff up because they knew you would be coming along to call them liars.
Seeing as how you won't answer asingle question directly and on point, I'll do it for you ----. What I posted is true history that has been around long before the murderers you so ardently admire were even kicked out of every Arab country (who will not even considedring lettting them return, ;and fashioned themselves Palestinians, claiming that the Jews have invaded their nation. They are outcasts who NEVER HAD A DAMNED NATION; nor are they PALESTINIANS. There ain't no such animal!!!! And never has been!!!!!
Get real, child. Grow up. Get with the real world.
I'll bet you even think Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs are martyrs.
Now go lie to someone else -- you aren't getting very far here. KOS or Demo Underground would just love to haved you -- go give 'em a thrill.
And what do you call those estimated over 700,000 people who lived in Palestine that were forced out when Israel became a nation? How did those Greek and Armenian churches and villages get there if it was a “land without people”?
The truth is Christians lived in the land of Palestine going all the way back to Pentecost. See Acts 2.
It’s interesting that you believe that Jews lived in Palestine for centuries, as some did, but nobody else. There were Greeks, Armenians, Jews, and Arabs — all living in Palestine for many generations, therefore all referred to themselves as “Palestinians.” There were homes, farms, businesses, and churches. It’s really not that hard to see the truth, unless you don’t want to, that is.
I haven’t confused Jews who live within the “settlements” with those that live without. My point was that all Jews in the territories are, by your definition, “settlers” (or “occupiers”), and a “settlement” is, by your definition, wherever any Jew in the territories live.
How many generations of Jews have to live there (without being driven out or murdered) before they cease being “settlers” and become “residents”? How few generations do Muslims have to live there to be referred to as “settlers”? Why do Muslims belong there, but not Jews?
It is rather obvious that you did not read the articles I posted -- or if you did, you don't understand the english language very well; because if you had there is no way you couold come up with such emptyheaded crap as that. Especially this: "It’s interesting that you believe that Jews lived in Palestine for centuries, as some did, but nobody else."
Where in the name of God did you find that? I never said that, or anything like it, EVER.
You are either dumb as a box of dead fish or you have a twisted imagination. Which is it?.
It’s really not that hard to see the truth, unless you don’t want to, that is. Try reading and understanding the history I posted, realizing that most of it is histroy older than both of us with no irons in the present asininity going on in the middle east. Then go back and try to find the real history of the UN and then events since Alger Hiss and the rest of the socialist/communists set it up. And last, but not least, try to get some reported events -- reported by someone other than a bunch of left-wing losers and/orArab losers. Amd tell me what us come up with.
Until you do, please don't bother me any more.
“My point was that all Jews in the territories are, by your definition, ‘settlers’ (or ‘occupiers’), and a ‘settlement’ is, by your definition, wherever any Jew in the territories live.”
Sorry, but that must be your own definition you’ve come up with. It sure isn’t mine.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you just simply didn’t understand (rather than someone who sees bigotry in everything and thereby makes things up), so I’ll repeat for the last time:
Jews who have lived in the territories and who do not live in the settlements are obviously not “settlers.” Only the people who live in the actual settlements are called “settlers.” They call themselves that.
See, that wasn’t so difficult after all, was it?
Apparently you haven’t read your own propaganda.
The following, for example, that you posted is unmitigated hogwash:
“The current myth is that these Arabs were long established in Palestine, until the Jews came and ‘displaced’ them. The fact is, that recent Arab immigration into Palestine ‘displaced’ the Jews. That the massive increase in Arab population was very recent is attested by the ruling of the United Nations: That any Arab who had lived in Palestine for two years and then left in 1948 qualifies as a ‘Palestinian refugees.’”
Shall we hear directly from BEN GURION himself in his own statement to his friend (As quoted in The Jewish Paradox : A personal memoir (1978) by Nahum Goldmann, pg. 99):
“I don’t understand your optimism. Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations’ time, but for the moment there is no chance. So, it’s simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out.”
Thank you for the reply, but it’s a singularly facile and evasive one. It begs the question of what a “settlement” is, unless you mean that it’s only a settlement if its Jewish residents call it one, and they’re only settlers if they refer to themselves that way. I doubt that’s a meaning that you’d accept, but it’s the only one you’ve given.
You also leave to imagination examples of Jews in the territories who are not in “settlements”. Feel free to identify them. Point out an exemplary community to me. Are the Jews in Hebron or the old city in Jerusalem settlers, occupiers, legitimate targets, or legitimate residents, for example?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.